Actor Carries Big Stick -- For Polo

Fund-raiser Helps Research On Spinal Injury

WELLINGTON — Actor Tommy Lee Jones says his polo game is "just fine." Fans of the sport can judge for themselves this weekend.

Jones was in town Monday to promote the Buoniconti Fund's second annual Celebrity Polo Match and Gala set for Saturday at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington.

The Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Dawn, both avid polo players, returned as hosts of the event this year.

The fund-raiser benefits the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis and features a celebrity polo match, including Jones and John Walsh, host of TV's America's Most Wanted, and an equestrian showcase with a special performance by famous Hollywood horse trainer Mario Luraschi.

Last year's event raised more than $500,000, fund officials said.

"Spinal cord injury doesn't discriminate," Tommy Lee Jones said Monday. "Everyone who lives with horses has a friend or several friends who [has been injured] or is in a wheelchair because of a spinal cord injury."

Dawn Jones agreed.

"All of us have had a polo accident where we've gone `Hmm, it could've been much worse,'" she said.

Jones took time out for the fund-raiser as his directorial debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, hits theaters. The modern Western has garnered positive reviews, including a best screenplay and a best acting trophy for Jones at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in France.

"As actor, director and producer it allowed me to be the controller," Jones said. "I was everybody's boss. The idea was to satisfy my lust for creative control."

Dawn Jones was a photographer on the film.

For Saturday's charity polo match, the couple invited Walsh because of his experience with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. He has his own polo team, the Shamrocks, and will take part in the event despite injuring his neck in a tournament earlier this month.

"The Buoniconti Fund is doing state-of-the-art research," Walsh said. "I've met paralyzed equestrians and they really have developed hope for those people and many others."

The Buoniconti Fund is the national fund-raising arm of the Miami Project, the world's largest research center dedicated to finding treatments and, ultimately, a cure for paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury. It is named for Marc Buoniconti, who in 1985 was left paralyzed in a college football game. He and his parents -- mother Terry and father Nick Buoniconti, a former Miami Dolphins linebacker -- established the organization.

"We are very close to the finish line in getting people out of wheelchairs," Jones said. "Now we have a realistic degree of hope that would've been wishful thinking 10 or 15 years ago."

Ivette M. Yee can be reached at imyee@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6538.

BENEFIT POLO

What: The second annual Celebrity Polo Match and Gala to benefit the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis